The Town House (56 page)

Having sent for the priest and the doctor and seen the work in the yard begun, I went in and carried up a new poultice and then a piece of clean parchment, the quill and the inkhorn. I looked down at these and thought – Instruments of Fate. A few scratches one way or another and a whole
future is settled and sealed. I was tempted to remind him that to leave a fortune to Maude would be to make sure that she stayed in Clevely for life. Without saying much he had limned that new Prioress for me; she would be capable of settling, in the way she wanted it, the shilly-shallying mind of any girl so richly dowered. When it came to the point however I found that the words would not be said. Instead of speaking I fluffed up his pillows, and then went and fetched my own to add to his, so that he was propped almost upright, and seemed to find relief so.

‘You’re very good to me,’ he croaked.

‘I’ll remind you of those words at Lady Day,’ I said lightly. I drew my wage then. He saw the joke and smiled. But he said,

‘I’ve seen my last Lady Day.’

A pang ran through me, for him, for myself, for all poor people who must, in the end, face the unknown dark. Kings, nobles, clerks and swineherds, all laid level at last, the songs sung, the good meals eaten, the kisses forgotten and done with. A great hunger for life took me. I decided, all in a moment, that I wouldn’t darken another day of my life by hankering for anything; if he doesn’t leave me a farthing, I thought, I’ll still be alive, and young, capable of enjoying myself.

The priest arrived, red-faced from his ride in the wind, carrying a bag of embroidered linen.

‘I am sorry indeed to find you thus,’ he began. Master Reed dismissed me with a glance and I went out, closing the door.

The woman who cooked for us all caught me on my way out of the house. What, she asked plaintively, should she do about dinner, and supper moreover; it was four days since anybody had given her an order and she’d managed as best she could, with bits of this and that, but now she was at the end. With the mistress gone silly and the master taken to his bed whom could she ask but me. ‘Thass all very sad, but when they come in, all them great hearty men, they ain’t to be put off with sorrowful words and tid-bits.’

That, I knew, would be the last thing that he would wish. His attitude towards food was extraordinary; very abstemious himself, he was always careful to see that his table was spread with good food and plentiful. Yet the waste of a crumb worried him. I had often noted his incongruity and concluded that he was a man who, in his time, had gone hungry and knew the value of food.

And now, once again, my severed mind bothered me. By the time dinner was on the table … oh, let us not think of that! Dying can be
a long business. They’ll come in hungry; and this is one of the days in their lives, in my life; all of us being rushed along by uncheckable time towards the moment when food will concern, will please us no more.

‘You say you’ve been on the makeshift,’ I said. ‘To put it even, what is the thing they like best?’

‘Salt beef and dumplings.’ She was beautifully certain about that. ‘But that’ll mean opening a new cask of beef. You say I am to do that?’

‘Yes. Open a new.…’ I broke off, hearing overhead the imperative banging of the stick which I had placed by Master Reed’s bedside so that he could summon attention.

‘Cask,’ I said, ‘and plenty of dumplings.’ I took the stairs two at a time.

It was the priest who had done the banging. When I entered he stood there, the stick in his hand. He gave me a sidelong, curiously shamefaced look and then looked down at the carved knob of the stick.

‘My hands,’ he said. ‘All knotted with old age and stiffness. It’s as much as I can do to write my name nowadays.’

And probably, I thought swiftly, as much as he could do at any time. In some places and in some circumstances very little learning was demanded of a man anxious to take orders. And that little, unpractised for thirty or forty years in a country parish, would shrivel to nothing.

Master Reed, coughing and hawking, said,

‘You do the scribing, Nicholas.’

The priest threw me another look, faintly hostile. I knew how he felt; there was no real need, in his opinion, to have the will written down. Dozens of men every year disposed of their property by word of mouth – a nuncupative will as it was called – and when it came to the attesting of such unwritten testaments there was no word that carried so much weight as a priest’s. I accuse Sir Andrew of nothing when I say that had I not been there with my ready pen, he could have called two gaping oafs from kitchen or yard, listened to Martin Reed’s wheezing expression of his last wishes and later on very easily proved that on his death bed the wool merchant had turned very pious and left most of his goods to Holy Church. That had been done a thousand times and would be again. The number of Chantries in the country, served by idle, self-indulgent priests who could not even remember the names of those for whom they were to sing Masses, and by whose bounty they lived, proves that.

In this case, here I was, seating myself sideways, awkwardly against the chest where I had set the writing things, leaving the table for the cloth, the wafer and the wine of the ritual.

Master Reed, in a voice that sounded like an ungreased wheel in the distance, said,

‘First I want every man who’s worked for me five years or more to have three shillings and fourpence; those less long, twenty pence.’

Before I could set down a word the priest said,

‘A written will should be properly made. This is no way to begin. You commend your soul to Almighty God and then say that you are of good mind and memory.’

‘You can both see. I’m short of breath. We’ll get the main things down. Trim it up afterwards.’ Master Reed signed to me to write, which I did hastily.

His habitual economy of words now served him well; the sentences, though barely audible, were brief and clear. Calling me his ‘faithful servant and good friend’, he left me the premises, the good will, tools and instruments which would enable me to carry on his business as woolmerchant, weaver and smith. His two ships and his flocks were not included in this bequest, but he left me twenty pounds in cash for immediate expenses. Out of the profits of the business I was to pay, each year, three pounds to Sir Godfrey Blanchefleur, the elder, and ten to Anne Reed, widow of Richard Reed deceased, so long as they should live.

It was easy enough to keep pace with his dictation because of his frequent pauses to cough and gather breath. Having written that I looked at him, hoping to convey my gratitude in a glance, but he was staring ahead, frowning. He drew a rattling breath and went on.

Everything else of which he was possessed, the house, his ships, his cash money, the sheep-run at Minsham and the flocks; two house properties in Baildon Saltgate, the Great Field at Horringer, the freehold of ‘God Spare Mariners’, an inn at Bywater, were to go to his dearly beloved grand-daughter, Maude Reed.…

The name emerged in such an inconclusive way that for a second or two I was certain that he was going to add some conditional phrase. Holding the pen suspended I looked at him again and as I did so a bout of coughing racked him. When it was done, he said,

‘That’s all.’

Slowly I placed the full stop which would hold Maude in the nunnery. There was a little silence, broken by the priest’s rasping voice, saying with genuine horror,

‘Such a will a heathen might make. No mention of Holy Church, of
alms or charity or so much as a Mass for your sinful soul. My son, I bid you think again. For your own sake.’

‘What do you want me to say?’

‘I,’ Sir Andrew’s voice conveyed his affront. ‘I want nothing, except to ease your passage through Purgatory and give you credit at the Last Judgment. You, Martin Reed, like the young man who came to Our Lord, are a man of great possessions. I would not have you, like him, go sorrowful away when all the reckoning is made. And of this will I say that a Saracen who had never taken the Body and Blood of Christ upon his tongue might leave it behind.’

Master Reed had sunk a little further back into his pile of pillows and half closed his eyes.

‘Sir Andrew,’ I began, in an expostulatory voice.

‘Be silent!’ he said. ‘You were brought in to write and well you have done it. I have his soul to care for. Martin, for your own sake, make a gift to the Church, one of your many properties. One third to buy Masses for your soul; one third for the poor; and one third to be used at the priest’s discretion. At Flaxham we have no bell.’ He added the final words with a disarming simplicity.

‘Then let it be the Minsham sheep run, that being nearest to you.’

‘I will see that the Masses are faithfully said.’

I scratched the sheep run out of the list of properties that were to be Maude’s, and thought how the Prioress would grudge it, could she but know. I added the bequest to those already written, with details of its disposal. Then a thought struck me.

‘You have not named those who should execute your will, sir.’

‘You,’ he said, wearily. ‘And Sir Andrew, here, if he is willing.’

‘Right readily. And the bell, Martin, shall bear your name, with some reminder. “Pray for the soul of Martin Reed, whenever you my tongue shall heed” or something like that.’

‘I thank you,’ Martin Reed said, but he looked at me as he spoke, and one of his eyebrows lifted as I had seen it do when Mistress Reed spoke with extra haughtiness, or Walter made some unusually extravagant statement. And I thought to myself – This is not the way he would have willed it on the afternoon when he came back from Clevely. I put the quill into the inkhorn and tipped it a little, so that a thin black stream ran from corner to corner of the written sheet.

‘Now look what I have done,’ I said. ‘I am very sorry. The chest is awkward to write at. Shall I now make a fair copy?’

‘Yes,’ said Sir Andrew firmly. ‘And in the re-writing make a proper beginning. Write, “In the name of Almighty God Amen”. And then go on, “I, Martin Reed, being of good mind and memory, make my testament in this wise”. Can you bear that in mind? And first mention the gift to Flaxham Church, it will look better there than tagged on at the end.’

I looked again at my master. Save for two small dusky red patches over the cheek-bones his face was the colour of a candle; is eyes were half closed.

‘In all else, sir, this is as you wish?’

‘Make a fair copy, Nicholas; while I make my peace with God.’

I bent down and lifted one of his big, work-worn hands and put my lips to it. I fumbled in my mind for some words – not my own – with which to refute the priest’s attitude, and found them, spoke them haltingly. “‘What more can a man do than love mercy, do justice, and walk humbly before his God?” That you have always done, and God will know His own, sir.’

I picked up the writing things and went from the room as the priest settled his stole.

Downstairs in the office I re-wrote the will in a neat clear script, setting it down as I had been bidden, until I came to the point where, leaving Maude’s name hanging in the air, Master Reed had paused. There I wrote in what I genuinely believed he would himself have added at any other time; ‘on condition that she abandon all intention of becoming a nun.’ He had wanted Maude to come home and marry and have children; those few added words would give her the chance to do so at least.

Then I thought, nobody would make such a condition without providing against its non-acceptance. So I added that if Maude insisted upon becoming a professed religious all her portion was to go to Flaxham Church. It hurt me to dispose so lightly of such a fortune but the priest had just shown that like many people who do not rely upon the written word, he had an excellent memory. That final sentence would blur his memory and stop his mouth. It also, in a curious way, cleared my conscience.

Two witnesses who had no interest in the will were needed. I fetched two men who were waiting in the forge. They made their crosses and I wrote their names below.

By mid-day Martin Reed was peacefully unconscious, and in that state he died, just before dawn on the following morning.

Interval

What he found so hard to stomach was that in the end he brought about his own undoing; was punished for behaving well; sustained a hurt which would last a life-time simply because he had shown a delicate consideration for another person’s feelings and exercised self-restraint.